Stewart Island

In Polynesian mythology, Maui is a powerful, intelligent demigod. He’s featured in some of the most important Maori myths, and his resume includes snaring the sun out of the sky and taming fire.

Perhaps the most well known story is of Maui hauling the north island of New Zealand out of the ocean, using blood from his nose for bait.

According to the story, Maui is fishing with his brothers, seated on a canoe symbolic of New Zealand’s south island. Far out to sea, the brother drop an anchor into the water, and using a jawbone as bait, Maui catches a monstrosity of a fish. He leaves the fish with his brothers to find a priest to bless the catch, and in his absence they gut the fish, gouging the north island’s mountains and valleys into its flesh. To this day, the north island is considered to be Maui’s fish (Te Ika), the south island is known as Maui’s canoe (Te Waka).

 

Since arriving in New Zealand, I’ve traveled across Maui’s canoe and his fish, flying into Auckland in February and scooting down the north island, then living in Dunedin and backpacking around the south island nearly every weekend this semester.  But there is one more island in the triad along with Maui’s canoe and his fish, and that is Maui’s anchor stone (Te Punga), which allowed his canoe to hold fast while he hauled up the giant fish. That anchor is Stewart Island, or Rakiura (the Maori name), one of the southernmost landmass on earth with a permanent residential population.

Only 381 people live on Stewart Island year round, most of them in the island’s only town, Oban. It’s a remote, forested island dominated by a swampy river valley, with a vibrant native bird population due to the relative absence of rodent predators. If you’re lucky, you can see the Aurora Australis (Southern lights) from the island. But despite its southerly location, the island has a remarkably temperate climate, good enough for shorts in the fall.

To get to the island from mainland New Zealand, you can either fly or take the hour-long, 130-dollar ferry that cuts across 30 kilometers of the Foveaux Strait. For Anzac Day weekend (a holiday weekend that commemorates all New Zealanders killed in war), me, and five other friends crossed that strait at the bottom of the world to explore the remote jungley terrain of Maui’s anchorstone.

We took off on a Friday and cut south toward the southerly tip of the south island. We took our time passing through the rolling verdant hills and rugged oceanside cliffs of the Catlins, a region on the far southeastern coast of the south island that feels reminiscent of Scotland or Ireland. It’s sprinkled with patches of sunny temperate rainforest and gorgeous waterfalls. Although the Catlins area hosts a population of only about 1200, the exposed location, wild weather and heavy ocean swells make the area a secret gem for big wave surfers.

On Friday, our Stewart Island crew consisted of me, Riz, Tim, Micah, Sam, Drew, Bri and her brother, but when Bri and bro saw the incredible surf hitting the Catlin coast and the stellar weather forecast, they opted to stay on the beach for the weekend.

The Catlins: Hike to Purakaunui Falls through the temperate rainforest:

 

Purakaunui Falls:

   

The surf…

We camped at a Holiday Park in Bluff, the southerliest town on New Zealand’s south island and the take off point for Stewart Island. It’s a blustery sea port with a population of less than 2000; we didn’t spend much time there but did check out the local bar for a quick brew. The small-town feeling reminded me of Collingwood, but Bluff seems more rugged and exposed in contrast to Collingwood’s homey and protected location in peaceful Golden Bay. Something about that pub reminded me of the pub in the movie “The Perfect Storm.”

We woke the next morning to gray skies and a 9am boat, and were off on our way south, the farthest south most of us will probably go in our lives, unless we make it to Antarctica. The mood was stormy and subtly dramatic, perfect for the crossing, but the clouds steadily burned off in the late morning sun. Throughout the ferry ride an eerie yet gorgeous band of brilliant yellow rimmed the horizon just above the sea, like a sunrise that lasted four hours. We passed craggy rock island and forested islands populated only by birds, sprinkled throughout the choppy slate gray waves.

Unlimited free coffee on the ferry made up for the exorbitant price; by the time we docked we were ready with backpacking packs packed and nerves stoked on caffeine.

Morning ferry ride to Stewart Island:

    

The ferry docked at Halfmoon Bay in the island’s only town, Oban. To start the track we had to get to Lee Bay, so we had to walk about 40 minutes along a road winding along the island’s coast. I couldn’t complain; it was gorgeous and remote and we saw about two people and one car throughout the walk. The environment reminded me a bit of Vashon, but even more rugged and with an exotic, jungley feel. The road crested hills from which we could peer down at shallow bays and beaches slowly lightening and turning blue with the strengthening sun. Our goal for the night was North Arm hut, where we’d meet up with a group of Arcadia girls also doing the hike.

Along the road:

The first stretch of the walk itself follows the shoreline along pristine, isolated beaches and bays. We cut in and out of mossy forests and walked across segments of fine, white sand beaches covered in an array of rainbow conch shells and mussels, as the sun slowly burned off clouds and the sky brightened to a robin’s egg blue. There was virtually no one to be seen; the landscape felt like a scene from Castaway or Survivor. Flocks of native birds congregated on still beaches, and albatross — the largest birds in the world– flapped their heavy wings in the distance. From far away you would think they were seagulls, but up close they are ludicrously enormous. I don’t know if it came from simply knowing we were on a remote island or if the feeling was real, but the Rakiura track felt wild, mystical and almost fanstastical, as if any imagined creature could trot out of the woods or rise out of the water.

        

Eventually the trail left the beaches and cut through Stewart Island’s forests. They are dense, green and muddy, but welcoming let in a dappling of light. We bisected the forested island from Port William to North Arm Hut, a stretch that seemed to last forever. In the afternoon we passed an iconic “half way tree”– apparently, rangers from the Department of Conservation will mark trees as “halfway trees” regardless of if they actually mark the halfway point or not; apparently a lot of them are practical jokes on tired hikers, who will be pleasantly surprised and think they’re either almost to their destination, or will be shocked by how long they still have to walk. This halfway tree was marked by a massive buoy hanging in the branches. I can’t imagine how a ranger lugged it all the way there!

  

The sky darkened again as evening approached and we walked quickly to get to North Arm in time to set our tents up in the last patch of light, right before the rain hit. The North Arm hut sits on Paterson inlet, formerly a river system that was submerged when sea level rose after the last ice age. Maori once collected shells from the inlet to use to line trails through the bush and ate shellfish from its waters; it’s now a marine reserve.

We scurried over to the hut to take advantage of shelter and say hi to the group of Arcadia girls staying there, and stayed late into the night playing cards, unwilling to hike back to our tents in the pouring rain.  In the middle of the night, we were awoken by the shrill cry of… a kiwi! After Riz and I’s misidentification on the Heaphy track, we had done our research and this time I’m sure it was the iconic New Zealand bird. Although they’re endangered, 20,000 kiwi still live on Stewart Island. Being so remote, it’s their last refuge. Unfortunately I was too cozy in the tent to get out in the rain and kiwi hunt, but I was content with knowing they were hopping around in the area.

When we woke up it was still raining. Luckily it was our short day, the hike back to town where we all planned on grabbing fish and chips and a beer. Although the rain drizzled down and the path was unreasonably muddy, I may have enjoyed that day more. The woods were calm, hushed and mystical, and the rain only added to the magical feeling of being removed from the world and placed in a fantasy land. We walked through thick beds of dripping ferns of jurassic size and passed by still inlets cloaked in misty veils of gray, where birds lined the sand and took off in graceful lines through the rain.

North Arm hut:

        

Back in Oban, we were starving and wet; we cozied up in a warm, homey pub and grabbed the fish and chips and beer we’d all been craving. We sat on couches looking out the pub window at the harbor and watched as the sun emerged again, just in time for a spectacular ferry ride back to Bluff. As we waited on the doc, a double rainbow appeared across the harbor, some of the strongest colors I’ve seen in a rainbow– you could see purple! The sky was dazzling, and filled with albatross. They looked truly joyous, soaring behind our boat and diving to clip their wing tips on the waves. I didn’t even get a free coffee– this view made the pricey ferry worth it.

After Stewart Island, the Middle Earth journey is one more step towards completion. Although I still have a few more weeks left to adventure and a lot more to see, visiting all three islands and all three characters in Maui’s myth is crucial. Stewart Island may be the farthest south I’ll ever go, but I hope not… with a little taste of the southerly extremes, I think Antarctica is on the horizon…..

The ride back:

Easter Break pt. 3: West Coast Roadtrip

On day four of the Heaphy, the track plopped us off at beach about 20 minutes outside of Karamea, a tiny town with one hostel and no cellphone service where we’d meet up with Bri. Riz and I sat in the beach shelter, exhausted, eaten alive by sand flies and trying unsuccessfully to hitch hike.

After an hour, a rusty caravan rolled up along the dirt road, spewing dust. Inside the cab was an elf: a tiny, ancient Irish gypsy man, about four feet tall with a nearly incomprehensible accent. The caravan was crammed full of the entirety of his belongings. He’d come from Ireland ten or so years ago, and had spent the last decade wandering about New Zealand. He’d “done” the North Island (it took him nearly the whole decade) and now he was beginning on the South. He put our travels to shame. He kindly dropped us off at the only hostel in town, Rongo, and drove off to continue his wanders.

The plan was to stay at Rongo for one night, meet up with Bri, and drive down the South Island’s west coast back to Dunedin. Our plan was to stop at the beach, Pancake Rocks, and Franz Joseph glacier along the way.

When there’s only one hostel in town, you can get lucky, or you can strike out. We got very lucky. Rongo is, I’m fairly confident to say, the coolest hostel I’ve ever stayed at.

Upon first glance, one can’t help but notice that the building itself is painted in garish rainbow stripes. This could be a warning sign or it could make for a great time– the latter turned out to be the case. The entire complex is an art gallery: the walls are lined with paintings and photographs, the ceiling is hung with paper cranes and sculptures, and every piece of furniture is an art installation. A gorgeous upright piano sits in the corner alongside a guitar, for anyone’s use. In one hallway, every last inch of wall space is covered with inspirational quotes and doodles.

Turns out that artists in residence from all over the world stay at Rongo and complete installations for a free stay. They’ve hosted artists from Ireland, Japan, Israel, Australia, the US, Canada and France.

It’s the kind of place where you can spend literally weeks taking in the art, picking at the instruments strewn about, chatting with the fascinating people staying there, doodling on the walls, reading the books lining the living room, listening and contributing to the in-house radio show, taking a “fire bath” (bathtub with a fire lit beneath), participating in yoga classes…. We ended up doing one yoga class the morning after our arrival and hanging around just long enough to want to come back.

The living room:

  

Radio show’s recording studio:

My doodle for the wall:

The kitchen:

After a long leisurely morning, we tore ourselves away from Rongo around noon with two German hitch hikers in our car, and rolled on down the West Coast.

The South Island’s West Coast is reminiscent of Big Sur. It’s where the Southern Alps dramatically meet the Tasman Sea: a remote stretch of sharp cliffs dropping off into a dynamic, roaring ocean, with misty horizons and lush jungle blanketing hills rising to the east. Highway 6 is New Zealand’s equivalent of California’s coastal Highway 1; it’s a nearly treacherous stretch of cliffside hairpin turns through misty jungle mountains, with drop-offs into the ocean’s gorgeous turquoise maw. Tiny, oceanside towns are sprinkled along the West Coast, known for artists and hippies. You could spend weeks poking around the small towns, visiting galleries, surfing at the windblown beaches, and soaking in the mystical magic that seeps the West Coast. If only we didn’t have to rush past it all to make it to school!

West Coast Beaches:

In the late afternoon, we made it to “Pancake Rocks” in Punakaki, a small town on the West Coast. The Punikaki area rests on heavily eroded oceanside limestone cliffs, gouged with caves and sculpted into strange rock formations. Of course, as soon as we arrived, it started to rain. To avoid it, we slipped into one of Punakaki’s extensive limestone caves: gouged out by the sea, these caves extend so far back into the mountains that they’re completely, one hundred percent dark– not a single photon of light can enter.

Once it appeared that the rain wouldn’t let up we walked up the coast to Pancake Rocks. Aptly named, the rocks look just like vertical stacks of thin pancakes– tall spires extending out into the sea. (The day we saw them, they were pretty soggy– not so appetizing). They’re composed of alternating layers of plant sediments and marine creatures, and were created at the bottom of the sea under immense pressure. Blowholes surround the pancake rocks– vertical tunnels in the cliffs where the sea bursts up and through in high tides, misting the landscape.

Compared to the pristine remoteness of the Heaphy track, the amount of tourists at Pancake Rocks was a let down. That said, there were only about five people total at the site, so I really can’t complain. It’s incredible that after a four day track through the jungle, even New Zealand’s remote West Coast can feel like a dumping back into civilization.

Bri swinging on a vine outside a limestone cave:

Pancake rocks:

That night, we slept in Hokatika, a cute township an hour or so farther down the West Coast, in a hostel sadly incomparable to Rongo and thus not worthy of a description. We had to turn a blind eye to all the fun activities in the Hokatika region and move on– it was already Saturday and Easter Break was quickly coming to a close.

Our major destination the next day was Franz Joseph glacier, a strange icy enigma in a lush, rain forested region. Franz Joseph glacier is 12 kilometers long, but has been retreating rapidly in the last century. Although the glacier exhibits a natural cycle of advance and retreat, it’s undergone an unusually hasty retreat since 2008, attributed by most to global warming. Franz Joseph was teeming with tourists from all over the world, who take the hour-long track down the glacial valley until it reaches the ice. Due to prevalent rockslides, you’re not allowed to walk on to the glacier; the only way to stand on top of it is via helicopter and four hundred dollar bills. We chose to check it out from afar.

Walking down the valley:

  

Aside from being a gorgeous valley graced by waterfalls and rainbows, Franz Joseph glacier valley has been a lifesaver for geologists studying the Alpine fault’s movement. The valley sits directly on top of the Alpine Fault, which in turn forms the plate boundary between the Pacific and Australian plate. The Australian plate, which forms the Western margin of the Southern Alps, is simultaneously subducting and moving north relative to the Pacific plate. Simultaneously, the Pacific Plate is being uplifted and moving south. The Southern Alps themselves are formed by the Australian plate shoving the Pacific Plate up. The relative motion of the plates is 37 millimeters a year—a figure that seems very small, but that can do real damage over geological time.

These days, geologists use information from global sea floor spreading rates, satellite geodetic data and areal photos to determine the plates’ rate of motion. Since the Pacific-Australian plate boundary is heavily eroded and covered in rugged terrain and vegetation, it’s relatively difficult to spot small-scale evidence of the plates’ movement in the field.

Here’s when we come back to Franz Joseph glacier. The rock underneath the retreating Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers is being rapidly (well, according to geologic time) exposed as the ice melts, and the exposed surface is smooth Alpine Schist marked with handy ice scours. Back in 1979, J. Adams used the ice scours to determine the plate boundary’s rate of motion—still one of the only examples of some one finding small-scale evidence in the field. Ten years later, my Tectonics’ Professor’s Ph.D. advisors, R.J. Norris and A.F. Cooper, used the same ice scours to determine the slip rates on small faults in the glacial valleys.

Although the glacial retreat is sadly indicative of global warming, something good has come of it– it’s as if the glaciers have lifted a curtain to reveal a geologists’ playground. With more knowledge of the Alpine fault’s slip rate, scientists can better predict earthquakes on the South Island’s west coast. And that’s important– the midsection of the Alpine fault hasn’t seen a major earthquake in a couple hundred years, and is due for another (it has an earthquake cycle of 200-400 years, and the last one was in 1717). As of now, the best way to predict the next earthquake is by measuring the rate of tectonic plate movement and by looking back at earthquake history. So the more evidence we have of what those plates are doing, the safer we’ll be.

Climbing up to get a good view of Franz Joseph glacier:

The glacier!

Bri!

We left Franz Joseph in the late afternoon, and it was time to book it back home to good ol’ Dunedin. We sped down the West Coast and cut inland towards Queenstown and Waunaka for a quick dinner, sadly skipping through the gorgeous Mt. Aspiring National Park and a million places I want to see more than anything. What a shame to head back to school! I have to say though, Easter Break was incredibly satisfying, and at that point we had many weekends left to do more exploring. New Zealand is an absolute treasure trove, and it deserves the time that our Irish elven caravanning friend put into it during his ten years exploring. I can only be thankful that I have an entire semester to explore this country in bits and pieces, and make the most of it while I’m here.

Easter Break pt. 2: The Heaphy

As I mentioned in my last post (Easter Break pt. 2: Collingwood), leaving Collingwood for the Heaphy wasn’t easy after getting to know the Barhams. Although it was only for three nights, the luxury and ease of living with a real family– one that graciously fed us, entertained us, loved us and surrounded us with wholesome family vibes– was something I didn’t realize I missed as much as I did. The family inspired me to live my life the way they do– focused on family, connected to the land, simple and resourceful.

On Monday morning, Riz and I loaded our packs– stuffed with food and gear for 4 days of hiking– into the family’s sedan, and Marta drove us twenty minutes along a winding country road to the start of the Heaphy. The familial and taken-care-of feeling I had had the last three days, exacerbated by the fact that I haven’t been home in so long, peaked as we said our goodbyes: Marta was a mama bird releasing her young into the wild, to walk off along a dirt trail into the forest. Suddenly I was a kid again and unsure if I really wanted to brave these woods, when it felt like I could go back home to Collingwood. But I knew (and I would be right) that the Heaphy would be absolutely spectacular.

The Heaphy is a four day, 80 kilometer long hike that begins in Golden Bay’s lush Aorere Valley, cuts through the remote, protected Kahurangi National Park, and finishes off near Karamea, a small town on the West Coast. Four different environments on the Heaphy each span 20 kilometers, splitting the track into even quarters. On the first day of the Heaphy you walk through ancient Alpine beech forest, on the second day you traverse golden Alpine tussock grassland, on the third you descend through lush rainforest, and on the fourth you pass along a tropical coastline lined with primeval nikau palm groves.

The Kahurangi National Park encompasses the South Island’s entire northwest lobe, and no road runs through the entire park. As I wrote in my last blog, Highway 60 ends in Collingwood, and likewise, highway 67 ends in Karamea. The only path linking the two towns is the Heaphy. The 6, which joins the 60 much farther east in Motueka and the 67 farther south in Westport, carves a wide arc around Kahurangi as if it’s tiptoeing around a delicate, sleeping beast. From 1950 to 1980, the New Zealand government made repeated attempts to build a road through Kahurangi, along parts of the Heaphy track. The local populations supported the creation of a road, as towns in the far northwest of the South Island are isolated; they also thought that a road would bring more tourists and trampers to the northwest, and increase the popularity of the track.

At the same time, a campaign to save the Track arose, mostly motivated by fear that road construction would harm sections of ecological importance, like fragile nikau palm groves along the coastline. Ironically, the campaign to save the track ended up attracting hordes of hikers to the Heaphy and increased tourism in the northwest without need for a road. Now people are attracted to the Heaphy for its remote nature and ecological diversity, and it’s an integral member of the Great Walks possy. Responding to growing popularity, the Department of Conservation added and rebuilt most of the huts; now, the Heaphy’s huts are the best I’ve seen so far. It’s considered the best Great Walk by a good amount of people, mostly because it combines such astonishingly diverse environments in one four-day walk.

Before leaving, we had arranged with Bri to pick us up on the other side of the track, in Karamea. Because there aren’t roads through the Kahurangi, it would take her seven hours to drive from Collingwood to Karamea along Highway 6. The plan was that she’d rent a car in Golden Bay and after picking us up, we’d continue down the West Coast in the car, and eventually wind up back in Dunedin to have made a full circle of the South Island for spring break.

On the first day, Marta dropped us off in the forested foothills of the Tasman mountains, and we walked into the wild to start our first quarter of the journey. We’d sleep at Perry Saddle hut, which sits at the highest elevation of the hike. We started at around 1:30 pm (like I said, it was hard to get out of Collingwood) and the hours and daylight slipped by fast as we climbed our only ascent of the trip through lush green forests.

Around dusk, I stopped dead in the trail– a large flightless bird was on the trail in front of us. A kiwi?! We stood in a frozen hush as the bird hopped frantically off the trail and dove into the bushes. The sighting had been so brief, we couldn’t be sure, but it had to be a kiwi, right?! A few minutes later, we stopped dead again: a hundred meters or so up the trail, a giant animal was screeching and rolling around in the leaf litter. A giant squirrel?! Cautious but enthralled, we edged closer and saw that it was actually two large, flightless birds wrestling. And they definitely weren’t kiwis. They looked more like chickens– beady, evil eyes, short, sharp beak, and shiny, flat feathers, and a whir of flapping wings, biting beaks and scratching claws.

Turns out our fighting birds were wekas, another one of New Zealand’s large flightless birds. They’re about the size of a kiwi and are often confused with kiwis, but they’re much more common, especially on New Zealand’s northwest coast. They have a distinct whistle-shriek, and are carnivores– they’ll eat rabbits. Unlike kiwis, they walk around during the daytime, while kiwis are strictly nocturnal. While kiwis have a long beak, wekas have a short, sharp one they use as a weapon. They’re pretty scrappy, ugly fellers. And we were watching a pair of them fight in a lurid show of violence and domination! We watched until they were done, jaws agape, not about to cross the path in front of the claw-and-beak show. One of them finally ran away, and the other stalked after it through the bush like an evil, menacing chicken. Yikes. We moved on, bummed we didn’t see a kiwi, but feeling as if we had gotten our fill of bird entertainment.

 

Weka:

The sun set before we arrived at our camp on Perry Saddle. And as soon as we started to set up our tent, the rain began. Not again. It started with a drizzle, but to be safe, we set up our tent on the little wooden outdoor platform, with wood planks beneath us rather than sodden grass. Stupidly, we thought the dinky wooden roof above our heads would provide us with some shelter, and headed inside the hut with our cooking ingredients.

The Perry Saddle hut was the first of a series of three spectacularly luxurious huts. We cooked up hearty bean burritos and made friends with a pair of Australian best friends who were doing the hike in six days, and had brought along white wine and real wine glasses (how were they managing to carry all the food?!). Outside, the rain hammered down harder and the wind picked up. By the time we popped back out to camp, the rain was torrential and the wind howled furiously, blowing the rain up, down and all around, soaking the tent from all sides. Without stakes, our tent looked like it could fly away. We huddled inside and tried to ignore the howling wind and flapping tent walls, but after a couple hours realized we would never get to sleep.

I had remembered seeing open bunks in the hut. Why shouldn’t we just sneak inside? In a rush of storm-induced adrenaline we stuffed sleeping bags and clothes into a garbage bag and sprinted into the hut, and then rain back outside to set down the tent, cramming it into another garbage bag. We slid silentlly into unused bunks and slept like rocks from 1am to 8am. It was a very worthwhile steal and would set our standards of comfort and sneaking abilities for the rest of the trip.

When we woke up the next morning, the rain was, if anything, more intense. It didn’t just fall hard, but swarmed the environment in a chaotic storm of wind and wet, obliterating any sight more than a couple feet in front of you and ruining our chances of seeing the second day’s beautiful golden Alpine tussock land. We procrastinated in the hut for as long as we possibly could that morning, jealous of the lingering Aussie pair who only had 5 kilometers to walk that day. Finally we donned our rain jackets– useless against the mess outside– and stepped out into the gail.

Day two was a mental challenge to keep on tramping on through the cold and wet, but it was interlaced by gems of excitement and beauty. Every half hour or so, we would come across a river to cross– some narrow creeks that had spilled over the trail because of all the rain, and some wide, rushing rivers with tumbling white water, which you could cross on a seasonally erected hanging bridges. It was quite the adventure. At certain points, the trail became an elevated walkway, raised a meter or so above the swampy grassland. But because of all the flooded rivers, the water level hovered just over the walkway, creating a mystically aquatic trail and making us slosh through a couple inches of water for kilometers at a time. The grassland, like the yellow fields on the Routeburn, was savannah-like, and covered in short, twisting African-looking trees. We passed by limestone caves and strange, animal-like limestone boulders along the way, but didn’t have time for many stops; we had gotten a late start and wanted to make sure we reached the hut before dark.

By the time we reached the “one kilometer left until James Mackay hut” sign we were immensely relieved. The sun was about to go down, we were drenched, cold and exhausted, and 100% set on sneaking into the hut that night. The rain had not stopped and it wasn’t due to stop the next day; there was no way we were trying for another night in a storm. So when we got to the hut we walked directly in, counted about nine empty bunks, and made ourselves at home. This hut was equally gorgeous, brand new, and occupied by a raucous family reunion. The family– all kiwis– apparently plans a tramp every year in different locations, and has done so for decades. They invited us to participate in their quiz night, which we readily did, once again loving the family vibes and energy.

The next morning we left late again, around 10, and the rain continued to dribble down. It was much, much better than the previous day, and we anticipated it’d fizzle out. Day three was dominated by a decent through dense, lush jungle to the wide, meandering Heaphy River, which was reminiscent of the Amazon. We walked amongst thick vines, fern trees, palms, and the very best: Giant rata trees! I believe these are now my favorite tree: they’re giant forest trees endemic to New Zealand, and grow taller then 20 meters. They begin as hemiepiphytes, or plants that germinate in a forest canopy and initially lives harmlessly on another tree. But then the rata sends its roots downward to make contact with the ground; over hundreds of years, their roots hug, or “girdle” the host tree’s trunk until the original tree rots away, to eventually form a hollow “pseudo trunk” out of all of its roots and vines intertwined.The result is a giant, magical-looking fairytale tree with a hollow trunk and twisting vines, which seems to always host other plants and vines and animals on its thick, mossy branches.

James Mackay hut in the morning:

       

Once we arrived at the Heaphy River, our descent from the mountains was complete and the next step was to walk to the ocean. We’d end our day where the Heaphy River meets the ocean. When the tide comes in, the outward flow of the river clashes against the incoming tide, creating a dynamic dance of marine and terrestrial energy in opposition. As we followed the wide, calm Heaphy, blood red from its iron content, the rain stopped. We crossed arching bridges and passed tranquil riverside beaches. The closer we got to the ocean, the more palms appeared amongst the foliage.

The Heaphy river:

                

A rata tree:

  

Again we arrived at the hut at dark, but still popped out to the river’s edge to get a look at the ocean. That night in the hut, we lit candles and played cards with a Kiwi and his Spanish cousin who was traveling on a round-the-world ticket. The environment had changed: it was warm, humid, and tropical now, as if we had traveled from the Alps to the Amazon in one day.

Coming close to the hut:

The Heaphy Hut:

The next morning, the view through the Heaphy Hut’s windows topped any luxury resort I’ve seen: a pristine snapshot of ocean, blue skies, palms and forested cliffs. A layer of fog shrouded jungley hills that fell directly into a turquoise swelling ocean. The entire fourth day passes along the coast. Aside from the sandflies (like mosquitos but even more annoying), the coastal stretch was magical. The sea roared and sprayed to our right, the cliffs rose to our left, and we ducked under the bent and sagging trunks of exotic nikau palms. Stretches of the path ran along the beach, and we had to run to avoid the tide and swells. We could have been on a deserted tropical island out of Castaway.

                 

When we arrived in the parking lot near Karamea that ended the Heaphy, I didn’t want it to be over. We had tramped through alpine forest, tussock land, dense rainforest and tropical coastline– what could be next? After four days completely out of civilization, I was not ready to see cars and a parking lot. If Bri wasn’t about to come pick us up, I would have wanted to turn right around and do the whole thing again.

Easter Break pt. 1: Collingwood

At the northwest tip of New Zealand’s south island, a long, skinny peninsula of golden sand called sweeps up and curls over in a delicate C, sheltering waters between the north and south island called Golden Bay. It’s an oasis of stiller water and better weather between the Tasman sea and the dangerous and unpredictable Cook Strait, and harbors a scattering of small communities known for rural hippy vibes and artists.

The north and west parts of Golden Bay are almost completely unpopulated, the land set aside for national parks which house two Great Walks: the coastal, nearly tropical Abel Tasman where the Abel Tasman Great Walk is, and the mountainous Kahurangi, which encompasses the Heaphy Great Walk. Along the bay are two small, rural towns, Collingwood and Takaka. Collingwood is made up of a couple hundred farm houses splayed out amongst a landscape of cow-covered green rolling fields and hills leading up to the distant, forested mountains of Kahurangi National Park. It’s a small, tight community with a teeny town center on the beach– one pub, one little grocery store, one little bank.

Anna, Bri’s kiwi host two doors down on Castle Street, is from Collingwood. A couple weeks ago, Otago’s week-long Easter Break (their equivalent of Spring Break) was coming up and Riz and I were debating whether to shoot for hiking the Abel Tasman or Heaphy Great Walks. When Anna mentioned she lived 20 minutes away from the start of the Heaphy and was having people over at her house for break, we jumped on that idea and claimed a couple spots in a car for the long (12 hour) haul up to Collingwood.

So Easter break began on April 3rd with a massive early morning, Collingwood-bound car caravan. Anna happens to be friends with Micah’s kiwi host, so half of Micah’s flat came up too; it ended up being half of Bri’s flat, half of Micah’s flat, and Riz and I. We gathered at Bri’s house at 7am for a 12-hour drive up the East Coast of the south island, cars laden with emergency snacks: it was Good Friday, so all stores were required to close all day. (That’s one difference in NZ: stores are required by law to close on holidays. Enforced relaxation.)

We drove up the East Coast through Canterbury on Highway 1, passing Omaru, Timaru and Christchurch, then cut inland on the 7 towards Lewis Pass, jotted up north on the 65 to Murchison, curved west on the 6 past Nelson, and finished on the 60 to Collingwood, where Highway 60 ends (see the map below). We didn’t experience the entire East Coast, and missed out on Picton and Nelson (northeast South Island), but it was definitely enough driving for one day.

We were on a mission; we stopped only to refuel the car at gas gas stations and relieve ourselves in the gas station toilets. Music carried our spirits a long way, especially when we realized there was a famous musician in the car: Micah’s flat mate (Alex)’s best friend Nick is in a great band, Squirmy and the Woolens. He had brought his mini travel guitar– which was decked out in colorful designs, quotes, and a list of all the places it had traveled– and strummed us a soundtrack to the sunny scene out the car window. When it got dark, Anna’s brother William hooked it up with an hour of Aziz Ansari standup from his iPod, so we laughed until we peed for the last bit of the ride while munching on McDonalds burgers we had picked up in Takaka (It seems McDonalds, the heathens, do not believe in Good Friday).

Heading towards taller mountains in Anna’s car: Bri’s surfboard was squished in the middle of the seats, making the car a 3-seater instead of five.

Before arriving, all we knew about Anna’s house was it was essentially a small farm in a rural area. Most of the group were only going to be there for one day (Saturday) before taking off for the Abel Tasman, and Riz and I planned to peace out for the Heaphy on Monday. We all expected to stay out of Anna’s family’s business, set up our tents in the big back yard and fend for ourselves the whole time. So what came was a wonderfully pleasant surprise.

We pulled into Anna’s dark gravel driveway around 10pm and stumbled out of the car, upset that the drive was over, now that we were so immersed in Aziz’s jokes. Anna’s mom and Dad, Marta and Robert, were standing on the warmly lit porch to greet us with hugs, kisses and hand shakes, memorizing everyone’s names and ushering us inside. Three tents were already set up in the back yard, complete with pads and blankets. Inside, the family sat us down in the homey living room and brought us snacks and tea. All three of Anna’s siblings emerged to meet and host us. We were showered in the warmest of Kiwi hospitality.

Anna’s mom and dad immigrated to NZ from Hungary and England (respectively). They only settled in Collingwood after scouring the world for the perfect place to settle down and raise children in a naturally beautiful place, where they could live off the land to a certain extent. The choice was narrowed down to Seattle, British Colombia and New Zealand when they made their choice. Golden Bay came out on top partially because of its variable climate that allows them to grow anything from avocado to apples to corn to walnuts to bananas.

In the time we spent at their house, nearly everything we ate was grown on their land, in orchards and gardens. The porch was constantly stocked with barrels of apples, feijoas (a subtropical fruit kind of like a kiwi that you eat with a spoon), walnuts, pears, and chestnuts. They made their own bread, caught their own fish, and roasted their own potatoes. If that’ s not enough, they bought their own TV with gold flakes that they panned from the region’s gold-rich rivers. (Collingwood was a gold boom-town in the mid 1800’s, and was almost considered for NZ’s capital).

We hit the sack pretty fast that first night, and woke up the next morning to brilliant sunshine, blue skies, green flowery gardens, and a breakfast spread laid out for us by the family: fresh fruits and nuts, bread, cereals and coffee. I went on a long morning run down the country road, passing fields of cows and the foothills of the Tasman Mountains. The landscape looked like tropical farmland, reminiscent of Central America, and then ahead reminded me of the Swiss Alps. As I passed cow fields, the herds ran along side me, leaping and hopping until they came to their fence. Riz and I took a field trip to the walnut trees and picked walnuts off the ground, breaking them open to find the brain-like nut inside.

The back yard:

In the afternoon, we all loaded up into cars to the rugby field to cheer on William at his big game (Collingwood v Takaka). The Collingwood team was a multigenerational conglomeration of Collingwood men, and most of the town came out to cheer them on. There were no grand stands of spectators, food carts, chants or cheerleaders, just a simple grass field surrounded by trees and a gaggle of admiring family members cheering on their boys. It was really cool watching Anna run around and greet family and friends, and realize that connections in the town run deep and span generations. When Collingwood won, the adults retired into the hut next to the field to grab a beer while the boys showered, and then everyone came out again to watch the coach and captain present their speeches.

Eventually, the town slowly meandered down the road to the town’s only pub to continue celebrating. since the weather was so nice Bri, Riz, Alex, Nick and I decided to walk. It was about a 15 minute walk to town, which sat at the mouth of the slow, meandering Aorere river, where it empties out into the tranquil Golden Bay. Rather than the road (which is Highway 60– it also empties into the sea), we decided to follow the river to town and to the sea. So we stripped our shoes and wandered through reeds and pebbles until it got too deep. We ordered fish and chips (locally caught) at the pub and sat on the water’s edge to watch the sunset as we ate.

As the evening deepened, the pub became essentially a family celebration as the rugby team bought rounds of beers and someone got the old-fashioned jukebox going. We met aunts, uncles, cousins and brothers, danced to the slightly-out dated but incredibly exciting throwback music we found on the jukebox, and played rounds of pool. It was loads of fun and the most genuinely small-town Kiwi experience I’ve had so far and maybe will have in my time here.

       

The pub closed close to midnight and they put us on the free shuttle back to Anna’s. Walking down her gravel driveway, we scanned the sky for a full moon: we had noticed the night before it was almost full, so it should be full tonight. It was no where to be seen! The sky was completely dark but for stars. Someone has taken the moon!

Finally, some one spotted a red sliver in the sky. Was THAT the moon?! Some one taken to the moon with a carving knife and left but a sliver, painted in lunar blood. But no– it was an ECLIPSE! It was a total lunar eclipse, or “Blood Moon”, the third eclipse in the 2014-2015 tetrad. The mon was totally eclipsed, or completely hidden from sight for a full five minutes, so it honestly was gone. We had the crazy fortune to notice its absence in that exact time span, and to top it off, the sky was the clearest of clear, making the slowly emerging blood-red moon and the surrounding stars stand out in stark clarity.

In this eclipse, the moon’s shadow, or Umbra, moved across the moon to fully obscure it, and then continued to move to reveal it once again, in a matter of hours. How did the earth move so fast? The moon, earth and sun have to be perfectly aligned in a straight line for the moon to completely disappear in the earth’s shadow. The red color comes from the light from earth’s atmosphere refracting off the moon, a process that blocks some wavelengths of light and keeps red. Apparently, the eclipse was only fully visible in Siberia, northwestern Alaska, Western Australia and New Zealand (and most of Antarctica).

After a few minutes of watching the moon emerge, our attention shifted towards the stars. You could see the Milky Way stand out strongly against the black heavens in a thick, dense, milky stripe, nearly purple. Clouds of thousands of tiny stars millions of lightyears away hovered in like puffs of milky white. Each star stood out like a brilliant gem, and shooting stars flew across the sky every five seconds, it seemed. One shooting star, or asteroid, truly looked like a burning mass of rock; you could see the heavy material on fire and flying through space with a distinct stripe of color trailing the flame. It was the first shooting star I’d seen like that, and the best stars I’ve ever seen. The absence of light pollution, the absence of clouds, and the absence of moon came together in a harmonic trio of celestial clarity. As we watched the heavens, Nick and Alex took turns playing softly on the travel guitar, and we sang along to the songs we knew. It was the best surprise I could imagine.

The next morning we awoke to sunshine and green again, and another surprise: it was Easter! Some how, it hadn’t crossed my mind once that we would be at Anna’s for Easter. But of course the family went into full on Easter mode; I went on a run and Riz and Bri went biking while Marta hid bushels of eggs all over the property for her kids. We got to help on the hunt; turns out they were all hidden high, high up in trees, making for an adventurous hunt.

While the kids were hunting, Marta was cooking up an Easter feast. Most of our crew had left for the Abel Tasman, so just Riz, Bri and I got to spend Easter with the family. The feast was a spread of moist chicken, gravy and cranberry sauce, an array of vegetables and potatoes from the garden, and watermelon and cantaloupe for desert. We stuffed ourselves fully and then lazed around in the sunshine until it was time for the next Easter activity: Fishing.

Marta cooking:

Setting the table:

Robert, the dad, took us on the fishing adventure. The destination was Whanganui Inlet, a drowned river valley and one of New Zealand’s largest and least modified estuaries. The landscape– a mix of tidal channels and native coastal forest– has deemed the estuary a combination marine and wildlife reserve. To reach the flats we walked along a farm and then through forest, thick rubber gumboots on our feet and long fishing poles on our backs.

The edge of the woods came suddenly; trees parted to reveal a seemingly never-ending expanse of tidal flats spreading out to a narrow strip of ocean water and the distant mountains. Twice a day, the sea creeps up the valley and laps at the forest edge, creating intricate ripple patterns and depositing shells in the vast stretch of flat, shining sand. Walking across the flats felt like walking on a treadmill, across an empty desert, such was the expanse of flatness with no landmarks between us and the mountains on the other side. We walked to where the narrow strip of water lay at low tide and set up our poles, weary that the tide would be coming in towards us as night fell, to slowly envelop the ancient river valley in water.

The drive:

       

Robert and the kids took control of setting up the poles and attaching the bait (squid), and we all took turns fishing. The key is patience and vigilance; hold the pole with tender fingers to feel for a bite. A fish could nibble the squid and swim away, but if it’s eaten the hook, you have to reel it in. Whoever wasn’t fishing got to snack on chocolate easter eggs and throw the frisbee for Taz, the sheepdog mutt, who was more interested in swimming around with the frisbee than returning it to land. The fish of choice at the inlet are snappers. We ended up catching three of them; beautiful silver fish with turquoise spots lining their sides.

When the sun was beginning to go down, Bri and I decided to jog over to a strange orange vegetated rock formation in the middle of the tidal flats. It looked as if it had been swept and carved by the tides into a funky, sculpted formation. Wavy stripes of yellow and orange sandstone decorated its sides and it was topped off with a bright green hairdo of bushes, swept dramatically towards the ocean. We climbed to the top of one of the mounds and peeked over the bushes towards the others, admiring this landscape out of an artist’s dream.

It was dark soon and we headed back through the woods, satisfied with three fat snappers. As soon as we got back, Robert gutted and cleaned the fish, and popped them straight into the deep fat frier with some potatoes. We feasted on the fresh fish while watching Avatar, and then got the treat of getting to sleep inside in the guest room before we’d start the Heaphy track the following day.

After only two days with the family, leaving Collingwood was hard. We’d found a short term surrogate family who lived in an idyllic way: In harmony with nature and the land and removed from the dirt and bustle of a city, while still benefiting from a first world society’s infrastructure. They really had found a sweet spot in the lush northwest south island, and we had stumbled across a gem of a surprise. The Heaphy track had been Easter Break’s focus, and now our two days in Collingwood may have turned into the week’s highlight. But on Monday morning, Robert drove us to the store to get camping food and we packed up our bags for the Heaphy, to come next post….

The Routeburn

On the Arcadia-hosted Queenstown weekend, we got a quick, rainy taste of the Routeburn Great Walk. It was glorious, but definitely a tease: a few short-lived mountain vistas when curtains of clouds parted for hasty intermittent flurries of snapping camera shutters.

Unlike the Kepler’s loop, The Routeburn is a one-way hike that begins a couple hours out of Queenstown and ends a couple hours out of Te Anau, at “The Divide”. With Arcadia, we had hiked from the Queenstown end, up about one-third of the trail to Routeburn Falls hut and back, mostly through soggy emerald-green forests, rushing rivers and waterfalls. After our good weather on the Kepler, I was hoping we might be on a good luck streak long enough to experience the Routeburn in the sun this time. So the weekend after the Kepler, we (a slightly rearranged but equally stellar) group of friends planned a trip to complete the Routeburn journey.

Map of the trail:

The trip is half as long as the Kepler, so we had the luxury of being able to stay in a hostel the first night and only camp once on the trail. The difficult part was logistical– if we drive to one side of the track, and hike to the other, how do we get our car back..? Luckily, a Routeburn Masterplan had been in the works for weeks, spearheaded by Kirsten, who had plans of her own to make the hike more challenging: She was hiking barefoot.

She had lost “Odds Are”– a more luck-driven version of Truth or Dare. Biggie, Kirsten’s Kiwi Host (the same Biggie that climbed through my window on the first day in Dunedin, dubbing my room ‘The Portal’), challenged her to hike the entirety of the Routeburn with no shoes– or shave both her eyebrows.

Now the Routeburn may be shorter than some of the other Great Walks, but it may also be stock full of sharp rocks and gravel that look like they could slice your feet open. Our group’s collective response to the barefoot plan (Me, Riz, Bri, Micah and Biggie) was– sounds great, but bring extra shoes. She agreed.

The best and most realistic way to do a long one-way hike is to get a big group together, split in half, drive to opposites ends of the trail, hike in opposite directions, and then converge in the middle to swap car keys and drive each other’s cars home. So that we did. The other group was a group of girlfriends mostly from Arcadia. Biggie offered up his big SUV, and the other girls had a little sedan. Since we had six in our group we just had to commit to being a little squished (A little challenging, especially since Biggie has the nickname “Biggie” for a reason… this ended up involving Micah driving with this knees bent against his chest and Bri curled up in a ball on the car floor).

Both groups booked a campsite together for the one night on the trail, Saturday night. The logical intention was to camp about halfway along the trek at Lake Mackenzie hut, but that campsite was booked up (the Routeburn is popular!) so our campsite, Routeburn Flats, ended up being far at the Queenstown end of the track. This meant the groups either had a long first day and short second day or vice versa.

My group started in Te Anau, hiked a long Saturday (ended up being about 10 hours) and had a quick and breezy Sunday to pop out in beautiful Queenstown. We thought we had got the best end of the deal– we’d get the bulk of hiking over with early, and end in Queenstown for… FERGBURGER! (World’s best burger joint, if you can remember from my Queenstown weekend post.) So Saturday was our big hiking day: the day of specacular mountain vistas, glacier sightings, sweeping panoramas, spine tingling cliff faces and scenes straight out of Lord of the Rings.

Turns out, of the three weekend days, Friday and Sunday were gloriously sunny, and on Saturday… it Rained. All. Day.

The sun was shining on Friday evening when we took off, though, and we were in high spirits. We left late after Biggie’s lab, squished into the car like cozy peas in a pod, cranked up the tunes, and coasted up Highway 1 as the sun set golden on rolling green hills.

By 8 or so it was dark, and we were in the middle of nowhere, no streetlights to be found. The stars shone brilliantly in the crystal clear sky, and the milky way was a distinct stripe through the middle. We stopped the car on the side of the road to do some star gazin’ and moonlight dancin’. We left the car doors open so we could hear Slightly Stoopid and 311 drifting out into the night, and danced on the empty night road, taking in the universe.

An hour or so later, the mood took a dramatic twist when somebody spotted violent flames leaping through the forest across a dark field. Forest fire! It looked as if the entire distant hillside was aflame, and strangely, as if it had already burned all the trees in the area down to ash. Away from the major flame, smaller fires specked the hillside like hundreds of campfires.

We slowed the car and checked reception… What would Smoky the Bear do? What number were we supposed to call in these situations? It almost sounded like music was drifting towards us on the breeze… And then we realized: It’s a cult! They must be sacrificing something, or burning something down, with sacrificial bonfires sprinkled about the area.

There was only one way to find out: Go to the fire. And there was only one way there: a little gravel road that wove through the trees along side someone’s farmland and toward the hills. Biggie turned the car around and started down the road. It was pitch black in the trees. Suddenly the highbeams caught: A RABBIT! We all screamed, whiteknuckled, clutching each others hands. A little bit farther we entered a strange and eerie farm complex. A caged dog snarled at our car and a light flicked on in a hut at the top of the dark hill. The fire roared just beyond the buildings.

Was it a wildfire, a cult, or a controlled fire? We sat in the safety of the car, peeking out of the windows, and eventually decided that if the farm residents were probably aware that their entire hillside was on fire without our assistance. Right as we were leaving, a truck pulled up behind us. Biggie stopped the car and rolled down the window; the rest of us coiled into balls of fright: Here we go! This is it! It’s the cult master! He probably has a gun!

“Howdy!” It was an older gentleman farmer with a warm smile.

“Hi, we were concerned about the fire?”

“Oh, no worries, it’s completely controlled!” he said. “We’re burning off the dead crops to plant the next round.”

Whew. My fear drizzled away and we got back on the road, laughing. This is New Zealand… It couldn’t be safer; even the police don’t own guns.

***

We got to the hostel in Te Anau around 10pm and went straight to sleep, to wake up just at sunrise. It still hadn’t rained! The day was beautiful, the sky was clear, and the sun rose a brilliant orange. Maybe it wouldn’t rain at all! We ate our oatmeal in leisure, watching the sunrise and doing a little yoga before the hour long drive to the trailhead, where we would leave the car for the other group to pick up as they finished the following day.

We got to the carpark at The Divide after 10, and just as we arrived the drizzle began. Ah, good– the clouds were just holding their breath so they could start letting loose the raindrops as we started hiking.

We all watched apprehensively as Kirsten took the first few ginger steps across the gravel parking lot without shoes. She seemed fine… But how long would it last? The first few hours  of the hike were an uphill stretch along a gnarled dirt trail with intermittent rock, and set a pretty quick pace. Turns out Kirsten is superhuman: she went just as fast as everyone, and didn’t mention her feet once. After the first few minutes I already forgot she was barefoot.

We passed two huts and one emergency hut on the first day, and stopped at Lake Howden hut for a snack and Mackenzie Hut for lunch.

Lake Howden, one hour from the start:

The first few open views on the Routeburn were spectacular: the higher mountains were just starting to accumulate some snow, and low lying, brilliantly white clouds matched the snowy peaks, swirling and snaking along the tree line. The cliffs and mountains along the Routeburn are spectacular and dramatic in a fiercer, wilder way than the Kepler, especially in the moody weather, with dense gray storm clouds lowering over the peaks. Towering cliff faces of deep gray schist, washed in the rain and shining brilliantly, rose above us and fell below into glacier-carved valleys covered in a deep green temperate forest.

The Routeburn traverses two national parks: Fiordland National Park and Mt. Aspiring National Park. For the first half of the hike (the western, Te Anau side) we walked through Fiordland’s mossy temperate forests, and over the Alisa mountains. The border between the two is Harris Saddle, the highest point of the hike at 1,255 meters and the location of a tiny emergency hut for particularly bad weather. Beyond Harris Saddle, you’re in Mt. Aspiring National Park, traversing the Humboldt mountains and lowering into a beech-dominated landscape that’s been completely formed by intense glaciation. It’s also the filming location for Isengard from Lord of the Rings.

Soon after Lake Howden, we stumbled across an unexpected gem: The spectacular Erland Falls. The waterfall is 178 meters high, a thin cascade that tumbles vertically down the dramatic, dark schist cliff face. The falls were too big to capture in one picture, and I could only get the top half. We eagerly put down our packs and ran over to the crystal clear rock pools where the water was collecting; Biggie went under the falls, in the nook between the cliff and the spray. He got drenched by the spray, but in a way it was a good start to a long walk in the rain: Once you’re wet, a few more raindrops don’t feel like much.

 

 

  

Before leaving the falls we waterproofed as best we could: pack covers and garbage bags, and tramped on over increasingly sharp and slick rocks on the trail. Far below, meandering streams snuck through dense vegetation, and little lakes dotted the mountain sides.

It felt like one of the stormier scenes in the Lord of the Rings, where the camera zooms out to a panoramic view of the Fellowship tramping along a thin trail that hugs a cliff face, a storm nearly blowing the hobbits and ponies off into the deep, godforsaken valley below. It was as if someone was slowly and steadily ramping up the grayscale on the distant landscape, but the greenery surrounding us glowed an intense emerald hue that seemed saturated in color as well as rain.

By the time we spotted Lake Mackenzie hut in the distance, three hours after Lake Howden, my rain jacket was pretty much soaked through and we were already starting to shiver. The hut lay tucked amongst bushy greenery, backed by jade hills. Shy about going inside, we huddled under the awning and dug out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chocolate bars, shivering. Eventually the promise of warmth inside over came us and we snuck in: A wood stove burned merrily in the middle of the hut, and a group of elderly hikers were relaxing around it in a semicircle, cups of whisky in their hands. They welcomed us over and enthusiastically started telling stories and offering us tea. We chatted for a few minutes and then soldiered out into the rain again to tramp on.

The next section took us through eerie, twisting trees that seemed to bend and seemed alive, as if they would reach out and grab us with their branches. It felt like we were lost in the Tulgey Wood from Alice in Wonderland, and that strange creatures would pop out any second from within the twisting trees. Soon we were climbing, grateful for the workout because it was keeping us warm.

At the start of the incline we caught up with and passed Kirsten and Biggie, and half way up the first slope we passed the tree line. The rain was falling harder, and now that we were on an exposed cliff face, we noticed the wind. It buffeted us as much as it could and tried to knock us off the trail. Kirsten was starting to struggle, and we started to sing songs to keep us motivated. Our group strung out into a thinner line, and the singing lost effectiveness when the we couldn’t hear each other in the howl of the wind.

Below us, brilliant turquoise lakes shone like jewels in spite of the storm. The dramatic conditions simply made the landscape around us more dramatic: the cliffs seemed to drop more steeply and fiercely and the hardy alpine grass showed its hardiness by clinging on to the mountainside in the downpour. According to the brochure, we had a 4.5-6 hour walk from Lake Mackenzie to Routeburn Falls hut, and then another hour and a half to our campsite. And most of it would be in these conditions. Our next hope for shelter was the Harris Saddle emergency shelter, the highest point of the hike. It didn’t have a time estimate but looked to be about two thirds of the way to Routeburn Falls.

During this stretch I took fewer pictures to keep my camera from the rain…

The trail continued to weave along the cliff face amongst alpine grasses, or tussock land. The next few hours were a blur of never-ending curves as we wound slowly around the side of the mountain, hoping each time the emergency shelter would appear in the distance. Sometime during this stretch, Kirsten decided to put her shoes on, and Biggie some how convinced her to wait until the emergency shelter, which she did. When we finally spotted the tiny hut in the distance, tiny and buffeted by the storm, we were triumphant. I don’t have a picture of the hut from the outside, but here is a snapshot of emergency hut desperation:

We scarfed down some chocolate bars and did some jumping jacks and got back on our way. By this point I was pretty cold and just wanted to keep moving. Somehow, again, Biggie persuaded Kirsten to stick it out barefoot for a bit more, and she agreed. I couldn’t believe it– without a word of complaint, she was trooping like a true barefoot hobbit. The two of them dropped behind a bit more as we continued on and the trail got rockier, and Me, Bri, Riz and Micah continued on ahead. The lower we got, the less dramatic the scene became as the rain let up and the trail became less exposed, closer to the spot we had hiked to with Arcadia on the Queenstown trip.

When we finally spotted Routburn Falls hut in the distance, we were ecstatic. The view was strikingly familiar, too; I already had a picture of it: the Humboldt mountains as green lumbering beasts seated on a bed of deep yellow grass.

Superstar Hobbit!

Once Kirsten and Biggie arrived, we headed on again to set up the tents before they arrived. We only had an hour descent until the campsite, and it got dark just as we arrived at the hut, to find the other girls (who we’d swap keys with). The hut warden came out and greeted us; turned out our group was famous– he had heard about Kirsten. The hut wardens were all in the loop on the situation and were quite impressed. Since it was still raining and Kirsten was still on her way down, he ended up offering us the covered space outside the hut to pitch our tent. We were beyond grateful: otherwise the tent would have surely been flooded. We set up the tents in a hurry and changed into dry clothes, cooked dinner outside– veggie-bean burritos– and then snuck into the hut to eat, which was so incredibly delightfully warm. Paradise.

Kirsten and Biggie arrived, and Kirsten was still barefoot. Success! Since at that point she had finished the majority of the hike barefoot (we only had a couple hours the next day) Biggie decided she deserved to keep both her eyebrows. We slept very, very well that night, and woke up to no rain. Turns out that the other group, who we’d swapped keys with, were in for a clear, bright sunshiny day that day, with spectacular views… we really had drawn the short stick. But we had had an adventure.

The second day’s hike was a repeat of the Arcadia trip hike: an intensely green, mossy, mostly flat stroll with gorgeous river crossings and smaller falls.

Hiking out at the end of the trail, Kirsten wearing shoes:

  

Finished!

The bridge that marks the end of the hike:

Even though it was essentially only a one-day hike, we felt like we had gone through many days of adventure. The next challenge was to squeeze into the little red sedan in the car park (which we thankfully found) and drive to Queenstown for.. Fergburger!! It was a truly gorgeous day, and the views of Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables along the road to town were incredible.

Despite the sun, Queenstown was cold and cozy, and we all bundled up in our jackets to get burgers and sit by the lake. We called Jane, our beloved program director, and she and her husband met us there for a quick hello and catch-up.

  

The mountains, sky and lake were all the bluest of blue, and the clouds brilliant white, snaking along the mountain tops like capricious snow caps. Fergburger tasted better than ever. All in all, it felt as if we are in heaven. An adventure and a challenge, and I can’t imagine a better reward. After a couple hours we piled back into the little car and drove back to Dunedin, deeply satisfied.

Although… now have to do the Routeburn one more time to finally catch it in the sun… Third time’s the charm, right?

The lake:

  

The Kepler

In the southwest corner of the New Zealand’s south island lies Fiordland. It’s the southernmost nob of the Southern Alps, a waterlogged region of mountains and coast that’s been gouged by glaciers, uplifted by crashing tectonic plates, and invaded by ocean water that’s transformed 14 steep valleys into fjords.

Three out of the five Great Walks on the South Island are in Fiordland. The most famous is the Milford Track, a 53 kilometer trip with a view of Milford Sound, once used by the Maori for transporting greenstone, or jade. The Milford track doesn’t allow camping and huts get booked up 6 months in advance, so there wasn’t much option there. The other two Fiordland Great Walks are the Routbern—we did about half of that one during the Queenstown weekend—and the Kepler.

Given that it’s stunning, accessible, and easy to plan (it’s a 60 km loop rather than a one-way), the Kepler might be the most talked-about tracks amongst the international kids here. I’ve been keen to jump on it since the first weekend in Dunedin, and the week after my geology fieldtrip I finally had a chance to go.

We got a late start to planning the trip; it wasn’t until Thursday that our 5-man crew was finally solidified to me, Riz, Bri, Nick and Andrew. Choosing campsites were easy enough seeing as there are only two: The first night you stay at Brod Bay on the bank of Lake Te Anau, and on the second night you stay at Iris Burns, a valley sandwiched between touring jungly pinnacles.

I booked sites at Brod Bay for Friday night and Iris Burns for Saturday. This set our direction around the loop to be counter-clockwise.

Of course, the fact that we were to walk counter-clockwise did not implant in my brain in the slightest. All I had memorized was Brod Bay, then Iris Burns. It also didn’t occur to me to bring a map. In the hectic rush of planning, all that mattered was to get all the gear we needed and get ourselves to the start of the track, and everything else would work itself out.

Because we were so late to book a rental car, the only option was to pick one up from Jucy rental services at the Dunedin airport. Luckily Bri was down to take charge as the primary driver and literally take the charge on her card for the booking. We couldn’t get a ride to the airport (30 mins away) until 12 pm on Friday, though, so everything was pushed back a bit.

Wong, my Kiwi Host, dropped Bri and I at the airport and at the mercy of a rental car that refused to start unless you simultaneously jiggled the wheel, pressed on the break, and did the hokey pokey with all the windows up and doors locked. We had to get the rental guy to come over and help us three times before we figured out how the thing starts. With the car delay, plus the nuisance of gathering miscellaneous missing supplies and making peanut butter and banana sandwiches, we didn’t hit the road until after three.

New Zealand’s Great Walks are tightly run by the government (Department of Conservation/DOC), and you’re supposed to stop at the DOC office in Te Anau to pick up your campsite “tickets” before it closes at 5. Turns out at that point they also give you a map (oops). We weren’t going to make it on time, so I rang them on the way out requesting that they hide our tickets in the mailbox for us to snag after hours.

It was raining when we left, but we anticipated as much. Fiordland is famous for its rain, with an average of 200 rainy days and 8000 mm of rain a year. But as we drove, the skies cleared in tandem with the emergence of the Southern Alps on the horizon, and beams of afternoon light lit up the mountains like a slice of heaven. The road was remote and the wilderness magnificent. We were headed on the open road, out of Dunedin, on our own, the mountains at our fingertips.

After a 4 hour ride (with a pee break at an odd little hick town next to a taxidermy station) we arrived in the sleepy lakeside town of Te Anau to pick up the campsite tickets around 7. It took us a few loops around the complex and some knocking on windows to locate the mailbox, and by that time the sun was properly starting to set on beautiful Lake Te Anau—the golden hour. We drove off in the wrong direction and found ourselves seemilngly locked in network of manmade spits that turned out to be grassy docks; it took driving down three of them and almost into the water for us to realize we were on a fantail of dead ends and needed to get back to the mainland. Finally we got back on the highway and drove to Rainbow Reach, arriving around 8.

At the trailhead there was a big sign with arrows to the left and right: To the left (clockwise) was Monturao Hut, Iris Burns hut, and Lake Manapouri. To the left (counterclockwise) was just Control Gates. What about Brod Bay? It was getting dark fast and we needed to get a move on. It seemed obvious that in the situation we should go left towards all the things; we didn’t want to go to the Control Gates right? So we started walking left, to our doom.

Crossing the hanging bridge that begins the hike:

Andrew, waiting for Nick, who had to run back to the car 20 minutes into the hike when we realized we had forgotten to lock the car.

An hour later, it was completely dark and we were still in the woods without a sign, starting to trip over roots. We switched headlights on in time to spot a sign indicating that Moturao hut was 20 minutes ahead, and another hut was 15 minutes to our left. At this point we figured we should just get to any old hut to ask for directions, so we went left for 15 minutes until the trail ran straight a gorgeous lake reflecting blue evening light, a dead end. Hut? No hut. Were we in the twilight zone? Yes, in more than one way.

We admired the water and then backtracked and went on towards “Moturao hut.” We knew we were nearing a real hut when we wiffed the stench of portopotty a couple minutes on, then spotted lit windows in a low slung cedar complex.

We ran straight into the hut warden and told her we were headed to Brod Bay. This received first a full-body laugh and then a look of deep concern once she realized we were serious.

“But Brod Bay is a five hour hike from here!” she exclaimed. “Have you gone the wrong way?”

Indeed we had. We had gone the wrong way. The right direction was towards the control gates, which apparently are the real entrance to the track at the Kepler car park.

I was filled with an immediate and flooding sense of doom. We screwed up. We can’t do the track anymore. There is no way we’ll finish. We have nowhere to sleep tonight. We’re screwed. We’ll have to go home tomorrow and hang our head in defeat to be hung at the stake.

Luckily, the warden was a sweetheart and let us crash in the hut kitchen on emergency mattresses. In stoic stressed silence, we unpacked our sleeping bags and food in the ten minutes before 10pm, when the hut lights automatically switch off, and went outside to cook a late and tense buritto dinner. I borrowed a map from a couple in the hut, and poured over distances, times, elevations, and options.

The following night we had tickets for Iris Burns, so we had to make it there. It was 5 hours to Iris Burns from our current location, but then from Iris Burns to where we’d parked would be a grueling 40 km, 16 hour last day with crazy elevation gain. The couple thought this was a ridiculous idea and I disgruntledly agreed. We could just walk to Iris Burns and then backtrack, only seeing half of the track. But we’d be missing literally all the good parts—the mountain views, fjords, ridgelines and alpine meadows were all on the other half.

Option 3 was to simply wake up at 5 the next morning, run back to our car, drive to the Kepler car park, walk an hour to Brod Bay, and then do our day 2 hike (Brod Bay –> Iris Burns) as planned, just with a few hours extra hiking starting us off. It would still be a 34 km day, but it would be better than the first option.

So we scarfed down our burritos, went to sleep, and woke up in the dark at 5 for a predawn power walk through the darkness.

We got to the cars just as the sun was rising over the river and loaded up the car like pros, full of adrenaline. It wasn’t until we got to Kepler car park and started hiking again that hit me that it wasn’t raining! Maybe this would be possible.

The way to Brod Bay was a soft, flat wooded path at the edge of Lake Te Anau freckled with dappled light. Beams of sunlight hit the beech trees at a slant, lighting the leaves gold, and the turquoise lake lapped softly against white sand beaches at the wood’s edge.

Brod Bay:

The climb started pretty much immediately after Brod Bay, and it was killer. For the next two or so hours we were on uphill switchbacks climbing Luxmore mountain through dense beech forest, the view hidden from us.

We passed a gorgeous limestone cliff along the way with fossilized shells imbedded in it. I didn’t have time to investigate closely, but the combination of limestone and shells clearly indicates an ancient shallow marine environment. It reminded me of the way the field of geology began: when Leonardo DaVinci found shells on a mountain and decided they must have gotten there some way other than a biblical flood.

In the case of the Southern Alps, the rock was uplifted by the Alpine Fault. New Zealand lies right on top of an “inland” plate boundary between the Pacific and Australian plates. On the North Island, the oceanic Pacific plate is sliding deep under the Australian plate, melting and bubbling up magma, creating the volcanism and geothermal activity. On the South Island, the plate boundary is in the form of the Alpine Fault, a strike-slip boundary exactly like California’s San Andreas fault.

Along the Alpine fault, the Pacific Plate is moving southwest and the Australian plate is moving northeast. Over the last 15 million years, the two plates have slid 480 kilometers past each other, which is very fast by geologic standards. Increasingly, the two plates have started converging as well as slipping against each other, and as a result, pushed rock from deep in the ocean (schist and limestone in the Fiordland area) upwards to become the Southern Alps. They’ve risen 20 kilometers in the past 12 million years—again, a lot. If it weren’t for high rates of erosion, the Southern Alps would be a lot taller, but their highest point is Mt. Cook at 3,724 meters (named after Captain Cook, who named the Southern Alps).

Limestone cliffs:

We climbed and climbed, sweating, already beat, weary of the ominous day ahead. The view remained blocked by strange, mossy, twisting trees draped in lime-green lichen. The vegetation looked more and more like Dr. Suess the more dehydrated I got. Just as I was itching to call for a break we spotted a bright green kea in the trees above– the world’s only Apline parrot, only found in New Zealand’s southern Alps.

A good luck sign! Lo and behold, a minute later we got the reward for our climb: we reached the tree line, or “bushline” as they call it in NZ. The view opened up suddenly, dramatically and in 360 degrees, with a glowing Alpine savannah unfurling in front of us like a shag rug of spun gold. Below as, Lake Te Anau shone brilliant blue, matching the shade of the distant mountain ranges and nearly cloudless sky: the Takitimu, Snowdown and Earl ranges. Better yet, a sign at the tree line announced that we were 45 minutes from Luxmore hut, where we could refill our water bottles. We had nearly the estimated hiking time in half. We stopped to stretch, hydrate and bask in the sun before taking our sweet time meandering along the meadowed ridgeline path, sun-drunk in bliss.

The meadows are known as “tussockland”, sturdy grasses that thrive in a harsh alpine environment and shelter the takahe, a critically endangered flightless bird recently thought to be extinct.

Andrew:

Me and Bri:

Riz and Nick:

  

We took another glorious, sun soaked break at Luxmore hut, lying on the warm porch and doing a bit of yoga. Luxmore hut is my version of Luxury: at 1085 meters, it’s perched on a steep slope near the summit of Mt. Luxmore, with one of the best views I’ve seen in my life– overlooking dramatic peaks and a glistening fjord just below, like something you’d imagine in Norway. There were a gaggle of hikers eating lunch there when I arrived, and most of them were also headed for Iris Burns for the night. The hard work had paid off– we were caught up! And how did we luck out with this weather? Fiordland is known for its rain—we’d already experienced a typical downpouring day two weeks earier on the Routburn dayhike during Queenstown weekend, and were expecting something along those lines. Somehow, our bad luck was turning around a full 180 degrees. Dark night hiking, stumbling on gnarled roots and stupid mistakes had transformed into coasting on a gold and blue sunshine dream.

Happy Campers!

Since we had made up for the lost time, we decided to splurge with a side trip to the Luxmore Caves. To access the caves, you follow a narrow trail that weaves through the tussock until a gaping pit opens beneath your feet: voluminous caverns hidden in the mountain complete with towering stalactites and stalagmites. The caves are part of the Tunnel Burn formation, a limestone band that runs north-south through Fiordland.

Looking back at Luxmore Hut:

In the cave:

Leaving Luxmore Hut, I thought we had seen the best of the Kepler, but I was wrong. The ridglines, peaks and exhilarating vistas became more and more dramatic as we climbed on. We had passed the tree line, and were now nearing the high Alpine environment devoid of vegetation and dominated by scree as we approached Mt. Luxmore’s summit. The summit is the highest point on the track at 1472 meters. The earth fell away as we climbed a pile of moonscape-like boulders, wind whipping us violently, to peer down at the 360 degree panorama below. Mountain summits are so surreal; especially here, where we could see the lakes and patchwork farmland of the Te Anau valley just below while feeling as if we were on another planet.

Moving on past Luxmore Hut:

Climbing to the summit:

The summit:

Panorama at the summit:

Past the summit, the trail hugged impossibly steep mountainsides and followed a system of ridge lines with sweeping drops to the fjords below that gave me butterflies. We passed the Forest Burn and Hanging Valley emergency huts, which I’m sure are a godsend on a blizzardy day, but for us were just cute outpost cabins perched on the ridges.

We took a good, long break on the most spectacular ridge of all: Open and cliffed out on both sides, it was the skinniest, most spectacular ridgeline I’d ever seen. It wasn’t merely like traversing a backbone, but rather like tiny ants with backpacks tiptoeing along the green, spiky spine of a Spinosaurus— sleeping in the valley yet ready to rear up and buck us off like a horse swats flies with its tail.

Climbing:

Bri, approaching the ridge:

Ridgelines!

This picture is from the internet, but does the ridgeline more justice:

Now back to my photos… Can you spot Andrew hiking?

Euphoria!

How did they make these crazy trails? Apparently, the first trails up to Mt. Luxmore were cut by a sheep herder for summer grazing. It opened as a hiking track in the 80’s to ease the traffic on the Milford and Routebern tracks with the help of exeditioners and volunteers from all over the world who came to build the trail and huts.

Rugged Kepler mountains…

Soon after the skinniest ridgeline, our descent began back into the densely wooded, glacier-carved valley. But just before we dropped below the tree line once again to say goodbye to mountain vistas, a kea paid us another visit. A kea had welcomed us up past the tree line, and here was another kea to send us off. As if it didn’t want us to leave, it blocked the trail with a stubborn stance and wouldn’t move even as I sat next to it and attempted to communicate in raspy purrs and whistles. What a strange bird. Our moment of spiritual connection turned into a nervous retreat on my part when I started to notice the size and chomping power of its beak so close to my hands.

Kea, aka “mountain clowns” are social, nomadic, and highly inquisitive. That combination of characteristics allows them to survive in a harsh alpine environment, by allowing them to find and use food sources. They’re also mischievous and endearing, which is especially useful when humans are involved. It’s thought that keas developed these special characteristics during the last ice age, when their powerful curiosity helped them find food in a desolately glaciated landscape. Today, they nest in boulders in high altitude forest, and are mostly vegetarian, but for a handful of insects when they’re feeling some protein. I think the kea is my spirit animal.

Making friends: Spirit animal?

Once our descent began, we dropped fast. Now I understood why they told us not to come up this way. Within an hour, we descended 1,000 meters to under 500 meters of elevation at Iris Burns Hut and campsite, a quaint gathering of buildings in a hanging valley. After a 14 hour day (about 12 of them walking), we arrived just at dusk. The valley– a narrow strip of tussockland sandwiched between jungley pinnacles– was bustling with campers setting up tents and gathering cooking supplies.

The setting sun lit up an orange strip along the tips of peaks towering above, creating a rainbow of orange, purple and deep green. We proudly presented the warden our Iris Burns campsite tickets and rushed to get tents set up in the last lingering rays of sun as sandflies began their initial attacks. Sitting was bliss and our pasta dinner was bliss– even though we had to make about 15 rounds of noodles in our teeny pot. We sat at a picnic table as the air temperature dropped and sand flies continued to devour us. I overheard a German couple next door exclaiming about the day:

“Do you realize that we just did the best day of the best hike in New Zealand, on the best day of weather in the entire year?!”

I giggled thinking of last night’s screw up, but I think that some how, starting out on the wrong foot made our success even sweeter.

The next day’s walking was a flat, forested fairyland of ferns. We traipsed along valleys, up and down some easy wooded switchbacks, and through magnificent seas of ferns that stretched as far as the eye could see, like something out of Avatar. We almost stepped on bright red mushrooms– like the ones from Mario Kart– and peeked into hollows and nooks under tree roots that must house fairies.

Ferns, ferns, ferns….

Bri: “Can I have a spirit plant?!”

  

Mossy…

Once we got to Lake Manapouri, we knew we were close to the end and the Moturao hut. We ate lunch on the beach and then walked to Rainbow Reach, where friends we had met along the way kindly gave Nick a ride to the Kepler car park to pick up our car and come back to get us, cutting 3 extra hours off our day. So we almost finished the Kepler: We did Rainbow Reach–> Moturao twice, skipped Rainbow Reach–> Kepler Car park, and all in all hiked 62 kilometers instead of 60. In one day we hiked what the guide book suggests you hike in 3. But screw the guidebook, we didn’t bring one. (ha….)

Lunch at Lake Manapouri:

All the euphoria of having killed it at Kepler washed away upon learning about the Kepler Challenge, a running race that follows the entirety of the Kepler track’s 60 kilometers: the winners generally complete it in less than 5 hours. Compared to those hares, we’re an absolute herd of turtles, but a happy one.

Back to the Cretaceous at the Catlins

It was like I imagine the rolling green hills of the English countryside, just after dawn. Skies cold patchy blue behind a marine layer, rising sun backlighting the clouds. Our geology mobile, a retro-looking white and blue touring bus from the 90’s, cruised the Catlin coast’s blustery cliffs on the Southern Scenic Route, the region’s only road. To our left, the sheep sprawled out in the fields, bumbling in a frigid morning breeze. Waves of green hills flowed right to the oceanside cliffs like a frozen terrestrial ocean, competing with the tumultuous south Pacific that crashed blue below us.

Our mission: to scour the Catlin beaches for ancient fossilized shells before the tide blocked our way. Our first stop was at the Wangaloa formation, an area of 66-million year old rocks and fossils from the Cretaceous and early Paleocene.

The animals fossilized in the Wangaloa formation are from a fascinating blip of time on the geologic timeline. They came into existence right after perhaps the biggest, and definitely most famous, extinction event known to man: the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.

We still don’t know exactly what triggered it, but the most popular theory goes like this.

Sixty six million years ago, as the Cretaceous period transitioned into the Paleogene, massive asteroid hit the earth’s surface, and three quarters of all animal and plant species went extinct in a geologic blink of an eye, including all non-avian dinosaurs. The event is marked in the rock record by a thin sediment layer (sediment deposited during the extinction event) known as the K-Pg boundary. The layer contains high levels of iridium, a metal that is rarely found in earth’s crust, but is common in asteroids. That clue, coupled with the discovery of a 66 million year old, 112-mile wide crater in the Gulf of Mexico that looked suspiciously asteroid-derived, bolstered the theory that the extinction event was related to an asteroid’s impact.

A really big impact could have triggered a “long winter” climatic event, quelling plant photosynthesis for enough time to warrant mass extinction. The fact that animals that relied directly on photosynthesis went extinct in the event, while animals that consumed detritus were more likely to survive, supports the photosynthesis-block theory.

But in the wake of all the destruction lay evolutionary opportunity: ecologic niches were waiting to be filled. In a short period at the beginning of the Paleogene period (Paleocene epoch), mammals radiated out from a small, simple family into the diverse and extensive group of animals we’re familiar with today, producing groups like horses, primates, and whales.

In field work for my geology class, “Evolution of New Zealand Biota”, we focus on ancient marine invertibrates like snails, clams, oysters and squids, since their shells generally well preserved in the fossil record. Most of these species went extinct during the Cretaceous-Paleocene transition, but then re-emerged and radiated with new species during the Paleocene.

Our retro geo-mobile slowed down and pulled to a stop at the edge of a cliff, overlooking the crashing surf like a lighthouse. Sleeping geo students woke up from naps, rubbed groggy eyes and piled out onto the Wangaloa formation.

The Wangaloa formation encompassed the cliffs and boulders on the beach. It’s made up of fossiliferous sands and conglomerate rock, and sits on top of coal deposits from burned, petrified wood. The animals fossilized in its rocks almost all come from directly after the Cretaceous-Paleogene transition. In fact, geologists created a new geologic time unit specific to New Zealand called the “Wangaloan” because of the unit’s distinctive fauna.

Strangely, the Wangaloan formation includes marine invertebrates from the Cretaceous period that seem to have “survived” the extinction event, so for a long time geologists weren’t sure if the rock was from the Cretaceous or Paleogene.

On that cold, blustery Sunday morning, we geology students got to get on our hands and knees and scour the cliffs and beach rocks for indicative fossils. We scrambled down the cliff on a thin muddy trail, juggling rock hammers, hand lenses, hard hats and field notebooks, and strode along the beach to a brilliant orange sandy limestone cliff.

The cliff was imaginatively carved by the sea into a vertical sculpture of curves and contours, pockets and divets, decorated by swirls and stripes in a rainbow of yellows and oranges. Orange color like paint ran down the the wall into eyelets of pale yellow and deep red mouth-like ledges.  Embedded in the wall like ornaments were fossilized shells: Conchothyra (ancient swirly-shelled snails) and Lahillia (ancient clams) from the Cretaceous, and Purpurocardia (ancient clams) and Turritella (unicorn horn-shelled snails) from the Paleocene.

Conchothyra: the swirly-shelled snails from the Cretaceous (before the extinction event).

All of these boulders are full of shell fossils:

The fossils that look like bugles or long triangles are Turritella, the ancient snail shells from the Paleocene. They came to being right after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, filling niches left empty by the loss of most shell-building marine organisms.

Petrified wood:

Lahillia, bivalve clams from the Cretaceous, decorated the rock like confetti. Aside from New Zealand, lahillia are found in Argentina, Chile, Australia and Antarctica– all southern continents. How is that possible? Did they all evolve separately into the same species? More likely, they all lived together at one point long ago. Lahillia is one example of a species  that existed when the continents were connected– on the supercontinent Gondwana.

You may have heard of Pangaea, the supercontinent that existed about 510-180 million years ago when all of the earth’s continents were concentrated into one landmass. But then Pangaea split into Laurasia and Gondwana, northern and southern (respectively) supercontinents. Gondwana encompassed most of today’s southern hemisphere, including Antarctica, Africa, Madagascar, Australia, and South America, while Laurasia encompassed Europe, Asia and North America.

It also included the Arabian peninsula and the Indian subcontinent, because they used to be in the south. During the Paleocene, India started drifting north and eventually slammed into the Asian continent (formerly Laurasia) creating the Himalayas in the process. In the next few million years the Atlantic ocean grew larger, pushing Africa towards Europe to make the Mediterranean, and South America crept up towards North America.

The fossils from the Paleocene (Purpurocardia, Zeacolpus) probably came into being after Gondwana started breaking up. Thus, our pretty Wangaloan fossils are relics of both the K-Pg extinction event and the demise of Gondwana.

Moving back onto the bus:

Our next stop was at Roaring Bay, with fossils from the Jurassic and Triassic. As we drove, the sky opened out to let out a brilliant, nearly turquoise blue, and green Catlin cliffs lit up in tropical greens. We wound down the lush cliffside to an inlet surrounded known for congregations of penguins. (They come out at night, though, so we didn’t see any.)

At the water line, orange and crimson seaweed decorated the rocks like streamers and seals hid in caves. Roaring Bay is riddled with fossils: Jurassic plants, worms, snails, and even ichthyosaurs, large marine reptiles that also went extinct at the K-Pg extinction event.

We were free to scramble to our hearts desire on this stop, and were let loose to sniff out the ichthyosaur bone. Nobody could find it though, so the professor had to point it out.

We began to amble back and nearly ran into a seal and then were deterred by its ferocious snarl. On the last stretch, the tide had risen to lap up on the cliffs, and scrambling became mandatory as we rushed to beat a quickly rising tide, clinging to sculpted conglomerate pillars. Only on a geology trip. The sea demanded an end to our expedition, so we headed back toward the bus to head home.

 

Driving back home:

 

Queenstown

Hugging Lake Wakatipu, built among forested slopes and cradled by a mountain range literally called The ‘Remarkables’, Queenstown is a crescent of blissfully idyllic cabins, cafes, ski runs and gondolas. Some of the Lord of the Rings’ most dramatically beautiful mountain scenes were filmed in Queenstown: it’s featured in the opening sequence of Two Towers, and its beech forests are Lothorien.

It’s also a hotspot for adventure tourism, and known as the “adventure capital of the world.” And best of all for me, Queenstown is only a three-hour drive from Dunedin.

After our first week of school and on our first real weekend, Arcadia hosted a Queenstown adventure weekend from Friday through Sunday, with a sampling of activities each day, to expose us to all the possibilities right on our doorstep (as if we hadn’t already realized the how unbelievably much New Zealand has to offer). Queenstown is basically straight west from Dunedin, at a similar latitude but farther from the ocean. It’s closer to the southern Alps, though, which snake along the island’s west coast.

The highway from Dunedin to Queenstown isn’t a multi-lane interstate; it’s a narrow, winding two-lane highway that curves and loops over rolling green fields in pastel watercolor greens, and pastureland dotted with thousands of little white sheep. The hills are blanketed in thick grass that clings to the topography with a texture like that of the shorn sheep that graze it, and rund, deep green bushes dot the slopes like forest green buttons on a light green velvet pin cushion. Between fields, rows of evergreen trees like green mohawks are planted in hedge-like fashion to protect crops from the wind.

Closer to Queenstown, the road slips into deep valleys sandwiched between rising shale cliffs, and peaks ahead become bluer and sharper in the distance. We passed through the smaller towns of Middlemarch, Alexandra, Clyde, Cromwell (known for fruit-growing), Arrowtown (an old mining town where people pan for gold), and a stretch of vineyards close to Queenstown where much of New Zealand’s famous wines are produced.

The landscape is at one moment farmland, then mountainous, and then a stretch of yellow savannah crisscrossed by shallow rivers. We stopped at the brilliantly turquoise Shotover River, which cuts through tilted schist cliffs covered in red and green shrubs like christmas ornaments. It’s a glacial river, and the brilliant turquoise color comes from glacial flour, or finely ground rock, that scatters light.

In a couple hours, we’d be on a jet boat– our first activity of the weekend– cruising along that river.

The drive:

The Shotover jet boat ride was a way for us to dip one toe into the pool of adrenaline that Queenstown floats in. Because they don’t have external propellors, jet boats are capable of skimming over water as shallow as 10 cams deep. They draw in water from intakes at the bottom of the boat and use internal propellors to compress and shoot the water out at the back. The force of the water spraying out both propels the boat forward and allows it to steer. The goal is a fast and thrilling ride; the jet boats cut through canyons narrowly avoiding boulders and cliff walls, zoom forward and break, and spin over 360 degrees. The little red boat below is our jet boat:

After the jet boat ride the Arcadia group settled in at Pinewood Lodge, a nifty lodge-hostel complex at the edge of town and surrounded by trees. Each group of rooms had access to a big kitchen and dining area, but almost everyone decided to troop into town to Fergburger, a famous hipster burger joint known to have the best burgers in the world. The burgers all have creative names that would appall most vegetarians, like “Sweet Bambi”, “Little Lambey”, “Cockadoodle Oink” and “Tropical Swine.” I got the “Bun Laden”, a falafel burger drizzled with yogurt and sweet chili sauce, avacado and aoli. Although it wasn’t technically a meat burger, I can honestly claim it was the best “burger” I’ve ever had. We brought our ferg burgs down to Lake Wakatipu and ate on the dock.

Lake Wakatipu is New Zealand’s longest lake at 80 kilometers long, shaped like a Z as it curves between peaks rising on either side. Directly across from us, the deep purple-blue Remarkables rose directly out of the turquoise glacial water like iceburgs. With the water lapping up onto the mountains’ steep slopes, I wonder how much of the mountain’s base continues under the lake.

Ferg Burger:

: Dinner on the lake:

On Sunday we woke to a thick white drizzling rain. Channeling Seattle spirit, we threw on rain jackets, jumped in the bus, and cruised to the Routeburn Track trailhead for a day hike on one of New Zealand’s best Great Walks. We traced along the bank of lake Wakatipu on a narrow mountain road through lush mossy forest dripping in fog and mist. Our view was a white veil, though; the lake and mountains were almost completely obscured. Ahead of us, the winding road faded and vanished into the clouds, as if we were embarking on a mystical journey into heavenly regions. In fact, we were.

The Routeburn Track traverses the Southern Alps, winding through beech forests featured in Lord of the Rings, over rushing rivers, past countless thundering waterfalls, and down glacier-carved valleys. It rained nearly the entire time, as is typical in Fiordland (a large mountainous region on New Zealand’s west coast cut by fjords and covered in forest).

The landscape was filled with water in every form: It came from the sky, it surrounded us in mist and clouds, it thundered down the cliffs around us in waterfalls big and small, it snaked through valleys as rivers, it covered the trail in puddles, and it dotted the open grasslands in ponds and lakes. I was grateful for the many suspension bridges that saved us from crossing madly rushing rapids. Most bridges only allowed two to five people to walk across at once, and swung just enough to give you a good adrenaline rush. Beech trees, pine trees, ferns and moss dripped and hung in soggy wetness, and glowed green like the temperate rainforests of the northwest.

Ever so often we would pass valleys– flat, golden grassy fields that looked like African savannas. Brilliantly green mountains rose directly out of the fields like the Remarkables rise out of Lake Wakatipu, without warning or a gentle incline. They lay there like great lumbering green stegosauruses, the sharply inclined ridges like the fin along a dinosaur’s spine, hunkering down in the rain next to each other on a brilliant yellow carpet of grass. Between them a river flowed, following the yellow valley.

Once we started climbing we climbed one of those jungle lizards, along its spine, through the wet jungle and up to the first “hut,” the Routeburn Falls Hut. Like in the European Alps, huts along New Zealand’s Great Walks and other tracks are shelters built by the government to shelter hikers. I was expecting a crude wooden cabin; as we neared the first hut I thought we had accidentally stumbled upon a resort. But no, the Routeburn huts are incredibly nice and even provide access to gas stoves in a kitchen and flush toilets. We stopped on the porch to eat lunch under a roof, and stood on a porch that gazed over the clouded-over peaks, a view that is absolutely spectacular on a clear day, and for us offered a sense of lush mysticism. Turns out that the huts cost 50 dollars a night, which must be why the government can keep them so nice. Guess I’ll probably be camping at the Routeburn when I come here for the full track.

We didn’t stop there but hiked another 30 minutes to a lookout spot perched on slate-gray and jade green cliffs. Up on top, the view cleared enough for us to perch on slippery boulders and see down across the mountains and valley. Wet, windswept alpine grass covered the slopes like clumps of yellow-green seaweed swaying with the tide. When the sun hit the wet cliffside, they shone with reflected light like aluminum foil, and patches of snow beamed white on the ridges of peaks. I don’t know if you can ski right there, but the Routeburn Falls hut does also serves as a basecamp for skiers in the winter who want to access to backcountry skiing. Looking down at the hut:

After reaching the viewpoint on the cliffs, we were shuttled back down in order to make it back to Queenstown for dinner reservations. Back at the busses we were tired, satisfied, drenched, and high off the experience. Arcadia treated the group to a big pizza dinner at Winnie’s, a funky, hip pizza joint and bar decorated with old rusty bikes, that transforms into a club at night when the roof that opens up and you can dance under the stars. Afterwards, we sat at the lake and had a beer, watching the sunset create a rainbow from the sky to the horizon line and reflected onto the water. Winnie’s:

As if the Routeburn wasn’t enough, Arcadia had even more in store for us the next day. Annoyingly, Sunday turned out to be clear and sunny (we picked the wrong day to hike!) but in New Zealand– the Land of the Long White Cloud– you really never know what cloud will be lurking around the corner, and how impregnated with water it will be. It’s safe to assume a 50% chance of rain on a daily basis, and in Fiordland the chance is more like 75.

Sunday morning Arcadia treated us to a gondola ride reminiscent of the European Alps, into the mountainside directly behind Queenstown. Didn’t bring my camera up, but here is what we saw (pic from the internet):

The Gondola drops you off at Skyline Restaurant, which is surrounded by every adrenaline sport you can imagine: bunny jumping, sky diving, hang gliding, etc. etc. The whole group had a couple tickets to go luging, which is essentially go-karting down the mountainside at high speeds, and a few brave ones did the bungee at a nearby river. The bungee was the only activity not paid for by Arcadia, though, so I chose not to to save money; the highest jump was over 200 bucks. Maybe later in the semester if I have some leftover cash, but I’d rather spend the funds on traveling and trekking.

We bussed home collectively feeling blessed to have just been handed the opportunity to do so many adventure activities for free. For my part, I know I wouldn’t have otherwise paid for the overpriced gondola, luge or jet boat tickets, and nothing can beat a three day weekend of stress-free weekend of outdoor fun in the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen, for free. Queenstown, I’ll be back.

Spiritual Science

Before the earth, before the sun and the moon there was nothing but Io– a genderless, parentless energy dancing within the void. Io was, and is, the potential of the world, and the Maori spiritual equivalent to the christian God. Within the darkness and energy, Rangi, the Sky Father, embraced Papa, the Earth Mother. They held tight to one another through the long nigh, and gave birth to child-gods squeezed and trapped between their bodies– the Atua. The Atua, trapped in the void, longed for freedom; they pushed their parents apart and the began decorating the night with light.

Most wanted to stick with their mother and clothe her; Taane clothed his mother in forests, Tangaroa gifted her mother the sea. The angry one, Tāwhirimātea, wanted to stay with his father. He created the weather, and attacked his siblings with wind, rain, and storms. When the gods separated their parents, they left one brother behind, still in their mothers womb– Ruaumoko. Why couldn’t they have waited a couple more months? Trapped inside his mother for the rest of time, within the depths of the earth, Ru takes revenge on his brothers and sisters through shaking and splitting the earth– earthquakes– and spitting fiery lava– volcanoes.

One of the children became angry at his brothers and to seek revenge, ate their children. Because of this immoral act he became the god of war and the god of humans, because unlike the gods, humans are capable of unthinkable immoral acts.

Many Polynesian island societies worship the Atua gods, but nowhere are the myths so clearly defined and linked to nature than within the Maori society in New Zealand. The Maori gods are all personifications of natural phenomena, their subdeities phenomena within the realms of the sky, the earth, and the ocean. When the Maori worship their gods, they worship the natural world. Their creation stories are their science. When earthquakes ripped their homes apart, when winds howled at night, when volcanoes blew communities away, when rain caused cliffs to crumble and fall, and when fog shrouded the landscape in a milky white cloud, the Maori searched for an explanation, and answer, and their myths and legend were the answer they created.

Relative importance of the gods differs as well from island to island; because forests blanket so much of New Zealand and are the source of food and shelter, they are culturally and spiritually paramount as well. Taane, the god of forests, is considered the most powerful of the Atua. On the smaller Pacific islands, nourishment comes from the sea, and consequently Tangaroa, the god of the sea, is the elevated compared to the other gods.

For the Maori, every phenomenon must have a spirit or an energy inside it. Natural phenomena are not described and understood through the western languages of chemistry, math and physics, but rather through imaginative stories and spirituality. To me, this view of nature indicates a humbled perspective. If the sea is so great and powerful and mysterious it cannot be contained, cannot be understood, then it must be a god. Volcanoes are so powerful, so larger than life, they must be activated by something supernatural.

Right after my class on Maori society, I have a class on plate tectonics, during which we try to understand the physical workings of the earthquakes and volcanoes that dominate New Zealand’s landscape. But in that class, Ruaumoko’s name isn’t mentioned once. Rather than imagining a great spiritual energy trapped inside the earth, shaking angrily and setting forth fountains of lava, we disect the occurrence of these great natural catastrophes and pin them down with a calculator and a chart. We calculate and label and quantify them, down to an earthquake’s p-waves and s-waves, down to the rate and direction and reason of rotation of a tectonic plate, at its latitude, longitude, azimuth, down to the a trillionth of a millionth of a millimeter.

And then I have a class on the history of New Zealand biota, where we attempt to make sense of the history of plants and animals on the island through the direct and concrete evidence we have– the fossil record. We study the fossils and the details of their anatomy, trying to deduce how they migrated, dispersed, or were carried by continental drift to where they are now, how different species evolved and went extinct.

In contrast to the Maori myths, seeking and a complete understanding of the natural world– down to its basic elements, its smallest neutrinos– seems to neglect the vast spiritual dominance of nature over humankind. We now understand that the earth’s movement and deformation is not magic; continents move simply a result of convection within the mantle. We know that earthquakes are simply a result of shear stress on fault lines built up over time and released due to simple physical properties of rock. We can trace the lineages plants and animals on New Zealand’s shores and understand that they are only here because they were the ‘fittest,’ and happened to survive long enough to reproduce.

Where is the magic, the mystery? When I look up at the stars, sometimes it’s nice to imagine the sparkling beacons out in the vast night to be mysterious pricks of hope, or fantasy, instead of analyzing and characterizing their composition and location. Watching the tide come in, you could be blind to their mix of aqueous turquoise shades if lost in the mechanics of wave motion.

When the Maori came to New Zealand, they were accustomed to warm, island climates. They must have been blown away with its beauty, mystery, outrageous weather, and undomesticated jungles. They were dominated by nature and the difficulty of surviving in a new, wild land, so different from their home.

Being here myself, I’m blown away as well.

Within thirty minutes of my house on Castle Street, you can surf brilliant turquoise waves with seals, and relax on white sand so fine it squeaks when you walk across it. You can see penguins come out at night and gather on surf splattered rocks. You can hike under brilliant green dewy moss that hangs from twisting, exotic trees, through the jungle and waterfalls, passing a thousand species of ferns. You can stand on top of a mountain and watch the clouds roll under you, uncovering patchwork fields in a rainbow of greens, and Dunedin’s peninsula stretching out into the sea, breaking off into wooded islands.

At the edge of town (which is about 15 minutes from my house) you can hike five minutes into the thickly wooded hills and see glow worms light up a cave like brilliant stars. They’re worms that have bioluminescence, and only are found in a few places in New Zealand, Australia, India and Morocco. We hiked up in the evening, stopped at Nichols Falls along the way, and then sat in the glow worm cave until the stars came out– on the cave wall and in the sky above. I couldn’t get any pictures of the worms but they look like this (taken offline):

The waterfall:

It takes ten minutes to bus to St. Clair beach, where we went surfing on our second day, in full body wetsuits. The waves are great for beginners, but also uncrowded and full of incredibly skilled surfers who were fun to watch.

A half hour walk from St. Clair, St. Kilda beach is a magical inlet of water so turquoise it looks like someone spilled a bucket of green and blue paint in a bowl carved out of black volcanic rock. Black, goopy ancient lava in piles and caves– the remains of a Miocene volcanic eruption– stretches out into the ocean. Volcanic cliffs are draped in long, brilliant green grass and hairlike seaweed swirls in the sea like heads of mermaids twenty feet tall.

Volcanic flows:

Second time at Kilda: this time I swam out to the mouth of the inlet in the rolling waves, where we could see seals swimming by.

My flat mates and I went to Aramoana beach on a cloudy day, when a white cloudy sky matched white sand and stormy waters. We climbed pitch black volcanic pinnacles, one with a hearth carved out of the center. I climbed to the highest point and watched the beach from above; a handful of solitary people walked along the foaming shoreline, tiny specks amongst a vast stretching, stormy beach, small against the vastness of this country.

Dunedin, and New Zealand, continues to blow my mind every day. The nature I see here deserves more than a scientific explanation, so I choose to believe, at least a little, in the Autua within the sea and the forest, and the spirituality of this place.

Welcome to Otago

It’s night, the stars are out, and an uncontrolled bonfire is burning wildly in the middle of the road. Green shards of glass from smashed bottles are strewn about the flames. Through a thick column of smoke, you can see that the entire street is filled with a mosh pit of students shouting, drinking, and smashing bottles, hundreds thick. You peer closer at the fire, fearing what could be burning in there. Dodging flying sparks, you see the shape of– a ratty old couch.

In Dunedin, a medium sized university town on New Zealand’s south island, burning couches is a tradition. I don’t know where it started, but I know that the tradition burns on during Dunedin party nights, and a little bit of liquor in the system quite literally fans the flames. Until a year ago, students could get away with bring pretty much anything on the street with just a warning, but in ’13, when double the number of couches were set alight than previous years, the cops finally cracked down, and now threaten to expel kids who are caught lighting a couch.

The couch tradition burns especially strong during orientation week or “Ori”, the week before classes start when students move in to party, internationals get “oriented”, and “freshers” get egged and hazed. According to the New Zealand newspaper “Stuff“, orientation week is the Dunedin fire department’s busiest week of the year.

I had no idea that the Arcadia team was going to arrive in Dunedin a full week and a half before classes started, but we landed right in the thick of things, and got the opportunity to experience a student culture entirely different from Oxy. We rolled up in our tour bus on Wednesday evening, room assignments and keys. My little white slip of paper read 630 Castle. Castle– the name sounded familiar. The most notorious party street in all of Dunedin.

We were all curb kicked at our addresses, popped out like baby birds into the thick of the student jungle. Across the street from my house, a graffiti tag reading “Thirsty” covered the dilapidated side of an old victorian-style house. In the driveway and amongst smashed bottles, a gang of about fifteen Kiwi dudes– long ratty hair, baseball cap, bare feet, jean shorts– lounged on four ratty couches, throwing back brews and shootin the shit. I decided to hold off on introducing myself just yet, assured nonetheless that I’d soon make friends with these friendly-looking neighbors.

My house, a nice little old yellow flat due to be torn down and remodeled at the end of the semester, was tucked behind the front row of houses down a narrow driveway. It was completely empty but for a mysterious six pack in the fridge. I decided to take the moment to unpack and get set up.

Ten minutes after arriving there’s a bang on my window. A tall Kiwi with a goofy fro and backwards cap is banging on the glass, motioning wildly for me to open up. I crack the window to say hello– without a word, he and a British girl climb awkwardly through the window and plop into my room.

“I’m Biggie,” the tall one says. “I live next door. If you didn’t know, your room is The Portal– when the gate gets locked next door, we’ll need to come through here. So expect this to happen pretty regularly.”

Turns out he’s the Kiwi Host (like an RA that’s in charge of showing internationals a good time instead of disciplining, and basically throw parties for their residents) and lives next door with the British girl, a full-year exchange student.

Privacy is nonexistent in Dunedin. Everyone leaves their doors open; there is an ebb and flow of students and friends wandering through open doors (and apparently, windows) day and night. If you see something exciting happening through a window, it is perfectly acceptable to climb through unannounced and uninvited. Luckily the kids who broke in on the first night have become my good friends.

At the University of Otago, freshman live in the dorms, but then second years move onto Castle Street. At that point they’re surly all 18 (the legal drinking age), and thirsty for freedom. The result is comparable to letting loose a horde of starved, caged monkeys into a jungle completely completely covered with bananas. It’s an unregulated, unofficial, nonexclusive frat row on crack. Castle street also happens to be where they put the majority of the international kids.

Luckily, they put the international kids in the relatively nicer flats. On the other hand, kiwi flats are themed and covered with colorful street art. Doorways sport names like “The Jungle”, “The Beehive”, and “Nightmare Abbey.” They aren’t insulated, appliances tend not to work, and leaks spring from unlikely places. Most students don’t turn on the heating once the entire year to save money on electricity, and temperatures plummet far below freezing in New Zealand’s winter.

To save money on food, students’ meals generally resemble a can of tuna and a spoon. Food in New Zealand is mostly imported and expensive; even food grown locally is exported without being subsidized, so locals are competing with consumers overseas.

You can recognize a Kiwi dude immediately by the bare feet, long tangled and bleached surfer’s hair, ratty t-shirt loose about the shoulders with the neck hole cut out, and either sagging chinos or frayed shorts.

I did try to make friends with the “Thirsty” boys across the street, but was a bit overwhelmed by their drunken enthusiasm, so will have to give it another shot another day.

My first impression of Kiwis, though, is that they are incredibly relaxed, friendly and open, and I love it. On my first night, every local I met invited me over, and have every night since. Barristas, shop owners and bank tellers would rather have a half hour long chat with you than do business. Flight attendants aren’t concerned about overweight bags and travelers don’t bat an eyelash at a flight delayed an hour. Kids running around at night in shorts and a tank don’t seem to care about the 40 degree weather.

Perhaps most strikingly, campus cops didnt’t seem at all concerned about the Castle street chaos that ensued every night or Orientation week, but rather hung out on street corners wearing amused smiles and chatting with passerby’s.

Sunday night, I approached an officer for directions to a friend’s flat. He was standing calmly in the street in the midst of the couch-burning riot.

“I’m looking for 378 Leith street,” I offered, tentatively.

“Oh, I heard there’s a great party there!,” he replied. And then—“I’ll walk you over! How do you like Dunedin so far? Hope you’re having fun.”

We ducked out onto the next road, where a river lined with weeping willows runs through the center of campus. We chatted about my experience so far, and he gave me some tips on good hikes. It turned into a fifteen-minute conversation before I popped into my friend’s apartment.

Aside from the nightly couch-burning chaos, Orientation week included a line up of activities, some specifically for freshers to avoid (like the toga party where the noobs get egged on their way to the dance), some specifically for freshers to jump in on (SPORTS DAY!), and some all-around sweet-as cultural events, like the Highlanders vs. Cruisaders rugby game (Dunedin vs. Christ Church) and the Stickyfingers concert (an Australian band). Leading up to hard core nights we’ve had hard core days– beach-going, hiking, bouldering, swimming, runs and walks in the botanical garden, and exploring the city, all of which I will explain in greater detail soon.

My flat mates eventually arrived too, one after the other– first a Chicagoan named Matt, then Alessandro, a Spanish-Italian from Barcelona, then our famous Kiwi host, Wong, and finally Maggie from Iowa.

Our flat:

Here is a sampling of snapshots:

The Clock Tower on Campus:

Flats across the street:

Path to my flat:

Street fair:

Train station:

Beach:

Shenanigans:

Dunedin from above:

Botanical gardens:

660 flat, famous because a band started there. The most dilapidated disgusting building that I have ever seen, it is in high demand for its history.

Farmers market:

RUGBYYY!!!